Automak­ers, deal­ers, and fleets are imple­ment­ing changes to hit two key tar­gets: cost con­tain­ment and meet­ing envi­ron­men­tal goals. That runs the gamut from the vehi­cles to facil­i­ties man­age­ment, with ener­gy effi­cien­cy and cost sav­ings being top pri­or­i­ties. Deal­ers are becom­ing LEED-cer­ti­fied, automak­ers are mak­ing plants more ener­gy effi­cient, and fleets are look­ing for ways to reduce oper­at­ing costs along with car­bon emis­sions.

Abrams Con­sult­ing Group, Inc. (ACG), the lead­ing spe­cial­ized con­sult­ing and research firm serv­ing the glob­al vehi­cle rental and lease indus­tries for over three decades, and SOMS Tech­nolo­gies LLC (SOMS), the man­u­fac­tur­er of the micro­Green® Extend­ed Per­for­mance Oil Fil­ter, are work­ing togeth­er to bring a vehi­cle main­te­nance solu­tion to new mar­ket seg­ments. The two com­pa­nies have announced a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to intro­duce the micro­Green fil­ter into the car rental and fleet man­age­ment indus­try sec­tors.

The two-in-one fil­ter design com­bines a high-qual­i­ty full-flow fil­ter with a patent­ed micro­fil­ter sys­tem to main­tain oil qual­i­ty over time. The dif­fer­ence with tra­di­tion­al oil fil­ters is huge – the micro­Green oil fil­ter pro­gram allows the vehi­cle own­er to replace engine oil every 30,000 miles as com­pared to a more stan­dard 3,000–7,000 miles, depend­ing on nor­mal prac­tice and man­u­fac­tur­er guide­lines. The fil­ter fits most light- and medi­um-duty vehi­cles, and is installed and removed like a con­ven­tion­al oil fil­ter.

Car rental com­pa­nies stay on top of main­te­nance – their vehi­cles are exten­sive­ly used and add mileage faster than oth­er fleets. “The car rental indus­try is one where…. vehi­cle main­te­nance, includ­ing oil, fil­ters, and labor, is a sig­nif­i­cant expense, and there is mount­ing pres­sure to improve the envi­ron­men­tal pro­file and reduce the car­bon foot­print,” said Miles Fla­men­baum, pres­i­dent of SOMS. The micro­Green fil­ter “can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce oil and fil­ter main­te­nance costs while help­ing to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment.”

Neil Abrams, ACG founder and pres­i­dent, has worked with car rental com­pa­nies and sup­pli­ers on cost con­tain­ment – and in more recent years on envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. “Over our 32 year his­to­ry, it has been extreme­ly rare that ACG would work with a prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­er of a mun­dane, after-mar­ket replace­ment part such as an oil fil­ter,” Abrams said. “How­ev­er, after review­ing the suc­cess already achieved by the micro­Green fil­ter with tens of mil­lions of miles of test­ing and hun­dreds of mil­lions of miles of usage in com­mer­cial fleets, as well as under­tak­ing an analy­sis of the ben­e­fits to be derived by rental and fleet oper­a­tors, the val­ue propo­si­tion was obvi­ous and com­pelling. There are poten­tial annu­al sav­ings of 10s or 100s of thou­sands of dol­lars — mil­lions of dol­lars in some cas­es — depend­ing on the size of the fleet.”

Car­bon cred­its are being looked at more care­ful­ly these days by fleets, Fla­men­baum said. But for fleets, the micro­Green fil­ter offers a more direct approach – just like LED light bulbs offer with ener­gy effi­cien­cy. “They look at low-hang­ing fruit,” he said. “It’s a small piece of the puz­zle, but an easy part, based on effi­cien­cy.”